When it comes to career and executive coaching, some of the most important work takes place in one-on-one sessions with clients. This is when breakthrough insights are gained, motivation increases, and coaches often make important connections.
The next difficult thing is to put those words into action.
Transcribing conversations into meaningful action items for clients takes time and effort, but a team of assistants can easily handle this. But when you’re the only one running your business, the time and effort you put into coaching solopreneurs forces difficult trade-offs. You might have to sacrifice your presence by taking notes during sessions, spend hours transcribing insights from recordings after each call, or leave follow-through entirely up to the client.
Kim Surko is the founder of Surko Coaching. Amir Hamja of BI
“Trying to do everything on my own wasn’t an option. It just wasn’t possible to build a sustainable business,” said Kim Surko, founder of leadership coaching business Surko Coaching, about how it was easy to feel overwhelmed by work that was more administrative than transformational. “Relying on AI was the most natural solution to help with all of that responsibility.”
Learn how three independent entrepreneurs in leadership, business, and communications are leveraging AI to help their clients achieve more in less time, increasing the value of the work they provide and expanding their coaching capabilities.
From the “I see” moment to immediate action
For all three coaches, the biggest game-changer was using an AI note-taker to distill long conversations into something more specific.
After getting the client’s consent, “I record the coaching session and upload the transcript to ChatGPT, which allows me to quickly translate subtle insights from the conversation into tangible output that my clients can actually use, such as pitches, resumes, website copy, and positioning statements,” says Katherine Campbell Hurst, founder of business coaching firm KCH Coaching & Advisory. “What used to take weeks of painstaking refinement now takes minutes.”
Katherine Campbell Hurst is the founder of KCH Coaching & Advisory. Amir Hamja of BI
Liz Morrison, founder of communication coaching firm LM Strategic Storytelling, appreciates that valuable soundbites from her coaching sessions ensure that the AI doesn’t get lost in hours of recordings that no one has time to review. She builds custom projects with Claude, converting session recordings into “story banks” in minutes, pulling out 3-6 stories per session that clients can immediately use for interviews, networking, social media, and building their business.
Before AI, this type of work was essential, but doing it as a solopreneur meant sacrificing time that could be spent supporting other clients. “We’ve saved nearly an hour per day per client by having AI take and summarize notes,” Surko said, adding that AI support has nearly doubled their ability to coach clients.
Track and celebrate small wins
Surko also used AI to help clients see their progress and give them a sense of momentum. “A lot of the job of coaching is celebrating the small wins,” she said.
Kanbanchi, a project management tool powered by Gemini, allows Surko to quickly update to-do list boards showing all of a client’s goals and accomplishments.
“Being able to visualize our progress shows the value of coaching,” Surko said. She added that this process has been extremely valuable and has increased her client renewal rates because they can see exactly how close they are to their goals, instead of feeling like they’re not making progress.
Liz Morrison is the founder of LM Strategic Storytelling. BI’s Lauren Segal
Mr Morrison has a similar story. She built a custom ChatGPT tool called Story Explorer. This tool guides prospective clients through a story coaching exercise and comes up with one ready-to-use story that they can post on LinkedIn or use in networking conversations.
“I find that when I give people this builder, it starts a bigger conversation,” she said. They often discover other stories they want to explore further with Morrison, she said.
Instant coaching improvements
In addition to the benefits of increased presence during conversations, these coaches have found AI valuable for improving coaching during sessions in other ways.
For example, Surko used Gemini within Google Docs to create a searchable archive of a vast toolkit of exercises and prompts collected over her decades-long career. These were previously buried in various folders.
Surko used AI to organize numerous Google documents collected over a decades-long career. Amir Hamja of BI
Previously, you had to wait until the end of your session to find an exercise. Now I can quickly take them out during a session and interact more deeply with my clients. “I’m making more progress with each session,” she said of the improvement. “We can continue that momentum.”
AI could also be a useful coach for these coaching professionals.
Ms. Hurst uploaded her clients’ full-length notes and asked them what went well and what could have been improved. She also works with a coach, but appreciates that the AI can virtually cross her shoulders at any given time.
“The feedback is incredibly specific, pattern-based, and actionable. It effectively gives me a reflective practice partner that I don’t have access to as a solopreneur,” Hurst said.
